


what the water gave

by openmouthwideeye



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Mermaids, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-17
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-03-19 16:58:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13708743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openmouthwideeye/pseuds/openmouthwideeye
Summary: The gods give and the gods take away. Brienne's life turns upside down the day she drowns in Shipbreaker Bay."All will be well. You’re one of the merlings now.”





	1. prologue: sacrifice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GumTree](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GumTree/gifts).



> Yes, I know it's ridiculous that I'm posting a ~~new~~ previously unposted fic for Finish It February when I have half a dozen unfinished fics already begging for my attention. But here we go.
> 
> I started this fic well over a year ago, and, after a month or so of diligent writing, promptly abandoned it for less time-consuming projects. But it never quite left me, so I decided to dust it off and make some progress. I have the first handful of chapters (nearly) finished & a rough outline for the rest of the fic, so here's me hoping that posting it will keep me accountable. Fingers crossed it won't spiral out of scope like so many projects before it.
> 
> This is a slightly more traditional (read: darker) take on mermaid lore, though I wouldn't call it _dark_ , necessarily. But if you're looking for a Disneyfied fic, this ain't it.
> 
> Many thanks to GumTree, whose tireless cheerleading of this project (those many months ago) made it a reality. I never would've made it past the prologue without you <3

When a maid joins the sea, she surrenders her tears to the gods. Brienne’s eyes swam in saltwater whether she felt lonely or livid or listless, but the day she killed Ser Ronnet Connington, bile leaked from her neck, clouding the cobalt waters of Shipbreaker Bay.

The regal old woman sniffed, bubbles eddying around her gills as she studied the splintered ship that littered the rocky seabed. “It had to be done, child. No use gagging over it.”

“You can be glad,” added a slender girl, the one who’d grasped Brienne by the arm and pulled her down, down, down, even as her lungs had burst and her legs convulsed, bound in silk and seawater. “The other sailors reached shore.” The girl’s lips twitched with distaste. _“That_ man killed you. The Merling King demands satisfaction.”

 _Am I dead?_ Brienne wondered. _Have I been cast into the hells with the other grotesques?_ She looked up and up and up, where waves frothed and snapped under a raging sky. Seawater undulated around her, comforting but for the corpse netted in the rigging.

 _“Small wonder. Even the gods cannot bear to look on her.”_ Even then her betrothed had been laughing, wild and desperate over the gale. _“Better her than us. Toss that sow into the sea, before the Merling King tears us apart.”_

 _He deserved it,_  she thought, steeling herself to look at him. Red Ronnet was not so red any longer. Cold had leached the ruddiness from his cheeks, and the fire in his beard had extinguished to dull umber without the invigorating kiss of the sun. Her betrothed opened his mouth, eyes unseeing as he expelled a last, mocking breath. It bubbled across her palm, skittering skyward like some black bat come to curse her.

Brienne flinched away, scrubbing her hand on her skirt—on her _scales._  A sob wracked her, and bile bled from gills that quivered like green boys facing their first foe. Water crashed into her lungs in great, heaving waves, and her stomach lurched with panic that she might drown again.

“There, there,” the old woman clucked, swimming over to gather her up. “Life demands life, and that’s all there is to it. It’s done now. You’re safe from him and every other man.”

“All will be well,” soothed the sweet-faced girl, the one who’d drowned her. “You’re one of the merlings now.”

A current swept past as if to usher Brienne into its depths. Ser Ronnet twisted grotesquely, bound in his watery grave.

He had been right after all. It was bad luck to sail these waters with a maid freshly flowered.


	2. seaswept

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to everyone who read & responded to the prologue. It's awesome to know that I'm not the only one who wants to explore mermaids without the sparkly fairytale vibe (although there are some fantastic JB fairytale fics out there). There are so many stories and characters and legends in Westeros, & I'm having a blast exploring them. I hope y'all are too!
> 
> No beta to blame. All mistakes are mine.

“Elenei, no!”

Laughter kissed the woman’s face as she snatched her daughter, shrieking and wriggling, from the surf. The girl pitched forward in her mother’s arms, straining for a crab as it scuttled away. Sand clung to her tiny toes, leaping free to dance in the wind. Brienne could feel it still, all softness and grit, as real as the current stirring her fins.

Her father’s mouth drew taut. “Away, Tyta. The sea is no place for a child.”

Brienne watched the little family climb the once-familiar path to Evenfall Hall, vanishing all at once behind a grass-strewn dune.

“Brienne?”

“Why didn’t the Merling King save Galladon?” she asked softly as Willas swam up beside her. She knew the answer, but she had not learned to leave such things unsaid.

“It was an accident, not the folly of men. Who would have died in his place?”

 _Me,_  she thought, but her conviction was a murmur on the shore. Sadness advanced and retreated, leaving a film of relief. The sea had claimed her, too, long before she had boarded that ship.

“He’s a god,” she said anyway. “He could have saved him.”

Willas shook his head, grasping her shoulder. A comfort, but a reminder too.

“It is not for us to question the will of the gods. We’re your pod now, Brienne. Your family. That beach, that . . .” He cast about for the words of men. “. . . keep.” His hand tightened, anchoring her in the waves. “They belong to Elenei.”

The truth of it churned in her breast, inescapable as sirensong.

_And so does father._

 

* * *

 

The Merling King’s rages had battered the Stormlands for centuries, but he could be merciful when properly appeased. Each time his temper flared, Margaery and her cousins swam out with the Queen of Urchins to censure sailors who sacrificed others in their stead.

Such charity did not interest Loras. The moment the storms subsided, he would grab Brienne’s hand and drag her up the coast. Skimming the sea’s surface beside the playful porpoises, she felt like his sister in truth. Together, they marveled at the imposing cut of Storm’s End as she had with another brother in another life.

And she told stories. They were hard to recall at times, lessons half-learned, eroded by years underwater. But she had not forgotten the ancient histories, of Durran Godsgrief, who stole the sea god’s daughter and erected a fortress to protect his prize, and the arrogant Storm King Argilac, brought low by a fearsome beast who swam the skies.

As she spoke, other tales bobbed to the surface, names pulled as if from seafoam. Robert and Renly and Stannis, the Lord of Storm’s End, who had a daughter, she recalled—or perhaps that was Robert. Lady Lyanna, who could be contained no more than the tides, and often washed ashore at Winterfell before her husband knew her gone. Their mad fool, Swatches. He had lost his wits at sea, it was said, when a mermaid—but oh! perhaps he was not so mad after all.

Those were the stories Loras liked best. Brienne knew the follies of men too well, and was not so enamored; but as Loras stared longingly at a handsome youth, chased laughing through the seabreak by a burly, bearded man who might have been his brother, she wished that lesson had gone unlearned.

 

* * *

 

“Many migrations ago, a selkie sipped my blood.”

The Siren smiled like the receding tides, leaving a cold and barren beach. A chill floated up Brienne’s finlets, though she had heard the tale before.

“She beseeched the gods as I lay dying, and I awoke all in darkness. But the water’s call was strong and so was I, so I clawed my way through silt and sludge in search of the sea.

“There, the Moon-Pale Maiden shared her songs with me — both _foul_ and _fair."_  Her voice menaced and tantalized in turn.

Brienne felt the familiar tug on her spirit, just sharp enough to prove the truth of her power. The fingerlings erupted into excited whispers. Shireen bobbed among them, as shy at six as Brienne had been at twelve. She drifted closer to the Siren all the same, eyes shining above the rough gray scales that marred her cheek.

Loras swished his tail, irritated. Brienne sometimes thought he resented Shireen, for all that he’d been the one to drown her. He often complained that she wasn’t pretty enough to learn the songs, and the fingerlings distracted the Siren from teaching worthier students.

Brienne imagined he said much the same about her.

“Mind your manners, Loras,” his sister admonished, “or Grandmother will send you to Willas.”

He shuddered, finlets bristling from his spine.

Brienne bit her lip. If the Siren teased allure from her pupils’ lips, Willas taught his to shed it like unhealthy scales. But shifting was a dangerous skill; one misstep, and you may lose something permanent, as Willas himself had learned.

The Siren hummed a note and silence stole over the seabed.

“Take heed,” she warned. “Vengeance sings sweetly, songlings, but it cannot sustain you. Our magic drives men mad with longing, and persuades ladies to dash themselves on sea-kissed cliffs.”

“‘Take heed,’ my tailfin,” said the Queen of Urchins with a snort, when her grandchildren regaled her with the tale. “Murdered a fishwife for her life, so she was free to drive the brat good and batty before collecting her debt.” The old mermaid _tsk_ ed as if her grandchildren might be tempted to follow the same current. “And it was no song that stole her breath, though songs did for the boy.”

 _"Her?"_  Margaery whispered, fins fluttering with the eagerness of one whose breath had never been stolen. “The Siren was slain by a land-maid?”

“Ask her yourself, if you’re so keen to know,” her grandmother retorted. “Dying once was quite enough for me.”

 

* * *

 

“Ask your spine to bend,” the Siren had snapped before shooing Brienne off to Willas. “Your heart never will.”

But her spine could not save the sailors, no matter how it twisted with the wind. The screaming sky smothered sound, but Brienne sang anyway, a reedy timbre threaded with salt and steel. First one rain-slicked helm, then another turned toward her call. Hands went slack, then frantic, working the lines with a fury. The carrack rocked and rolled across the surging sea, defying sense and storm to reach her haven.

 

* * *

 

She did not want to learn their names, but they scraped past her ears like wind whispering over stone.

Bushy. Ambrose. Farrow.

Hugh Beesbury brought her seashells “as lovely as her spirit,” even as he wasted away on the minnows and crabs she caught on the tide. Owen Inchfield drowned in starlight when she swam out to sea, believing the men asleep. Hyle Hunt outlasted them all, mumbling rude quips through blistered lips as he lounged with his head in her lap. She danced her fingers along his gaunt ribs, flicking seawater with her tail, but he didn’t seem to notice the salt drying on her cheeks.

“I’ve seen some ugly maids,” he marveled, “but never one so hideous that I could not look away. My lady, I would gladly die to gaze upon your face just one moment more.”

The gods granted his wish.

 

* * *

 

 _Leave men to founder._  The Queen of Urchins and the Siren disagreed on everything from the subtleties of vengeance to the best way to eat starfish soup, but on that point, they could meet. If the Merling King wanted to meddle, he would stir his own whirlpool.

But this was not a man, only a boy. He thrashed, coughing and sputtering as Brienne caught him by the waist and hoisted him above the waves. He was skinny as an eel, and his eyes went round when he caught sight of her.

“You’re a—a— ” he stammered, gaping at the tail glimmering beneath the clear blue waters where she’d learned to swim. His face went red and he jerked his eyes above sea level, only to be overtaken by another round of sputters at the sight of her breasts.

“I won’t let you drown,” she swore, casting about for his lost boat. Something rough scraped her tail, and she prayed it was not wreckage until she caught sight of a carrack bobbing off the coast. It was larger and grander than _The Knights of Summer_ had been, but her throat tightened all the same.

“There’s a cay,” she said hoarsely, turning away from the boy’s ship. Batting away a coarse tangle of seaweed, she shook her fingers loose when they caught. “I’ll carry you— ”

The boy gulped a breath, and something beneath the waves yanked them under. She gasped, thrashed, caught in a snarl of weeds that dug furrows into her flesh and fins. The boy’s elbow caught her in the ribs and her gills burned like she’d spent too long in the sun.

_The boy!_

His eyes were wide as puff fish, bubbles blooming from pale lips. She released him, praying he would float, but he was as hopelessly snared as she. She kicked toward the sky, toward the air he so desperately needed. The rough weeds fought her, dragging her sideways. In fits and spurts, she pressed higher, straining until she felt the sun warm her cheeks through the water, and bubbles broke the surface almost before they’d left her lips.

She gasped as her body jerked into open air. The boy clung to her, coughing. Up and up and up they went, weightless, shedding sunbursts that danced on sea mist like old scales. And then the plunge, the pain, the forgotten feeling of sun-warmed wood under her palms as she flopped onto the ship’s deck, tangled in netting. The boy lay beside her, retching seawater.

“Well, lad,” came an amused voice, “she didn’t eat you after all.”

“N-no, Ser,” the boy gasped. “M-m’lord, I mean. Sorry.” He yanked at the net, becoming more and more tangled by the moment.

“You can call me ‘milady’ if it please you. You’ve brought me a fine jewel for my collection.” The man laughed, coming into view.

Men looked queer to Brienne now, with their slender, inflexible legs and sun-browned skin. She didn’t know if he was shorter, or taller, or hairier than most men, only that he reminded her of her father the last time she’d seen him. Laughter, not sorrow, had dug furrows into this man’s face, but a sun-bleached beard caught the sunlight, and a velvet ribbon tied tangled, sandy curls at his nape.

“Someone cut poor Pod free.”

He gestured, and a young sailor scrambled forward to hack at the net with a dull knife. Heart thudding, Brienne sieved for courtesies she hadn’t needed since she boarded Ser Ronnet’s ship, a lifetime and more ago.

“My lord,” she began haltingly, “I saved your boy from drowning. Now I require your aid.” She yanked a fistful of netting. It went taut as the boy wormed an arm free. “Release me from these bonds and—”

“By the Seven,” breathed the honeyed lord, squatting down for a better look. “Those fisherfolk’s tales weren’t full of chum, after all. It’s a bloody mermaid.”

High above, the gulls shrieked warning.

 _“My lord.”_ Her voice scraped across the sinkhole in her soul, the one that had snared her to  _The Knights of Summer’s_ ruin. _Ambrose. Bushy. Beesbury. Hunt._

A fog stole over his eyes like mist on a gray-green sea, and she shied away from her sirensong. He shook his head to clear it.

His smile came easy, unconcerned. “You’re not as pretty as rumor would have it,” he offered, resting his arms on bent knees, “if you’ll pardon me for saying so.”

Unease plunked into her belly like a maiden plummeting into the sea, not knowing what dangers lurked in its depths. “I saved the boy,” she said again. “Thank your gods and return me to mine.”

“S-she did,” said the boy, plucking at his laces and kicking off a netted boot. “She r-rescued me from drowning.”

The man laughed, rocking back on his heels. “As was the point, lad.”

Alarm coursed through her as he raked his eyes over her tail, her breasts, the gills that flanked her ribs and throat.

“I should be halfway across the Narrow Sea by now, but when I caught wind of a mermaid mooning about Shipbreaker Bay . . . Well, I’ve sailed the Smoking Sea to no avail. And my nephew always did go on about mermaids.”

She shuddered. Suddenly, all she could feel was the sun sucking moisture from her scales. “I cannot stay on this ship. I’ll die.”

Laughter swelled from the crew, echoing across the Straits of Tarth. She felt slow and stupid, spouting sense when they clearly had no use for it.

“Please,” she tried again, “I belong in the sea. I cannot survive on land.”

“No land here,” a sailor jeered. “Just decks and rigging.”

Panic surged through her. She thrashed, tearing at the knots of her prison with thick, sharp fingernails. The boy yelped, still netted by a leg. The sailor’s knife slipped across the delicate webbing of her coxal fin, spraying the rope with red, and she gasped, tail spasming.

Someone gave a whoop. “Well, I’ll be damned. It _is_ a bloody fish-girl!”

A squash-faced sailor stepped closer, leering down at her. “D’ye suppose she’s that ugly down to her—”

Brienne hissed and he stumbled, falling backward with a startled yelp.

The golden lord pressed a boot to the fallen sailor’s gut and heaved him across the deck. His voice rebounded across the bay, calling to the shores where she was born, the sea where she died. “Boys, get the barrel. Tion, fetch our mermaid something to drink.”

Two sailors grabbed her by the shoulders. She whipped her tail into one and felt his cheekbone crack. He crashed onto the deck, but his partner caught her throat in the bend of his arm, pressing painfully against her gills. She mustered the strength for another attack, but three more sailors pinned down her tail, wrestling it to the deck until she was spent.

The boy she’d saved clambered to his feet, finally freed in the tumult.

 _Pod,_  she remembered. _His name is Pod._

Suddenly she missed _her_ pod with a yearning stronger than the tides.

A skinny young man came running up, panting. “Uncle.”

He offered the captain a wineskin, but the lordling grinned, motioning him forward. “Go on, lad. Prove yourself on the field of battle.”

Shoulders square, he did as he was bid, green eyes darting nervously under a fringe of brown hair. She wondered if he was the nephew to blame. He grasped her jaw at the expense of a nipped thumb, and the man behind her jerked, forcing her chin up.

Uncorking the wineskin, Tion met her eyes. “Not a pleasant taste, I’m afraid.”

He brought the skin to her lips. She expected water, lukewarm and lifeless, but clean. But the liquid was thick and chalky, bitter on her tongue. The taste of it tickled memory, endless days of sleep and mourning when her father first became haunted by the sight of the sea.

She gagged, but Tion had a vice-grip on her jaw. The substance streamed from the sides of her mouth and trickled down her chin. She heaved, purging it from her gills, but he kept on pouring until her lips and tongue and gills were all numb, and the world tilted alarmingly.

Then he vanished, and the golden lord reappeared. He unfettered a smile that lurched before her eyes, twisting to a monstrous leer.

“My pardons, sea maiden. You are my guest, and I’ve forgotten my courtesies.” He flourished a bow as if he were a knight from song, and she a fair maiden. “My name is Gerion Lannister. Welcome aboard the _Laughing Lion.”_


	3. submerged

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's late and I should probably wait until morning, but it's finally done so I don't care. I'm posting it. 
> 
> Thank y'all so much for your feedback on the last chapter<3 I hope this little fic continues to enthrall.

The walls of her prison writhed in the murky light of the torches, casting strange shadows around the cavern. Rocky spears clung to the low ceiling, weeping fat, slimy tears that plunked down around her like rain. Here and there blackness beckoned, ancient alcoves hewn deep into the stone, but when Brienne hoisted herself from the still, dark waters of the pool, she found them as false as the lion lord’s courtesies.

The tunnel was the only opening, with its sentries of torches marching back until the black consumed them. The light made her eyes ache like a dragonfish in the deep, a pulsing lure to blind her to the dark. She had fallen prey its false promise but once, clawing and wriggling her way up the stone passage until her strength gave out. She lay there, gasping, until her gills forgot their last drink and her scales were so parched she thought they might flake away. She thought of Willas then, gritted her teeth and commanded her body to _shift,_ but her spine would yield no more than any other part of her.

That’s how the laughing lion lord had come upon her.

“Trust a maiden to choose death over a bit of dreariness.”

She hadn’t resisted when he’d caught her under the arms and hauled her back to the cavern. When she plunged into the depths of her prison, the brackish water tasted almost as sweet as the sea. By the time she surfaced, he’d returned with a basket of fish, days old and flavored with rot.

“Not the accommodations guests of the Rock are accustomed to, you understand.” Gerion Lannister had a quick smile and seemed to expect her to share it, no matter how balefully she regarded him. “But it can’t be helped. If I paraded you through the keep, you’d be dead or captured before the day was out.”

 _I am already captured,_ she thought, watching his movements for a misstep he never made. Her captor was careful, no matter how he pretended otherwise.

 

* * *

 

Water lapped at Brienne’s chin as she watched a misshapen shadow detach from the dim-lit tunnel. The years had eroded her discerning eye, but surely this was a man, not a child.

 _An imp,_  she thought, though she could not recall what the word meant.

“Are you one of Gerion’s grotesques?” Brienne had not spoken since the sailors had stuffed her into a saltwater barrel in the hold of the _Laughing Lion,_  a moon gone or more. The words scraped past her throat to breed monsters in the Imp’s twisted features.

He dropped his red silk cushion, following it to the rocky cavern floor.

“No.” A self-effacing grin twisted his mouth. “Only my father’s. But he is off in King’s Landing, and here I sit.”

Stubby fingers fanned the edges of his book, uncalloused by work or weapon. He carried no sword, no spear, no cudgel, and his misshapen body was not made for brute force. His eyes did not ridicule her as the sailors’ had.

 _Lord Gerion can be courteous too,_ she reminded herself. But she had been too long in her gloomy cave with no company but rotten fish.

She drifted forward, wary. “Who is your father?”

“Tywin Lannister, Hand of the King, Warden of the West, and Lord of Casterly Rock, in name if nothing else.” His words echoed off the wet cavern walls, lending weight to the pronouncement. “I’m sure you’ve heard of him,” he added drily.

Brienne shivered despite herself. It was said that the bowels of Casterly Rock swallowed foes whole and never relinquished their bones. She could almost hear the Siren singing.

_And now the rains weep o’er his hall . . ._

The Imp cocked his head as if he heard it, too. “You have,” he marveled. “Father will be pleased to know that his reputation turns even fishes’ blood cold.”

“I’m not a _fish,”_ she snapped. Her tail slashed at the water, and a wave sloshed over the lip of the pool.

He shielded the book with his body, grimacing when a stray droplet stained the cover. “Not a fish,” he agreed, scooting his cushion further away. “And I’d thank you not to douse the book. It’s older than you by a good century.”

His eyes followed her tail with interest, even as he feigned indifference. She jerked it beneath the water, scowling when his eyes found her breasts instead. She had forgotten how strange men were about breasts; even small, uncomely breasts like hers. She flicked her tail again, but he anticipated her, maneuvering the tome away from the spray.

“Have no fear, your tits are not to my liking. Meaning no offense,” he added, a faint leer belying his words, “it’s just that I like them larger. Preferably on my sweet wife, who won’t claw me for grabbing a handful.”

_A great sea cow, this one, but without the teats to match._

Her skin prickled at the memory of boisterous laughter between bitter draughts of poppy. She sank beneath the pool until only her eyes were visible, water lapping gently at her cheeks. Merlings had many vices, but she’d grown unused the crudities of men.

The dwarf disappeared behind the pages, sifting through them one by one. “According to the stories, mermaids adorn their bosoms with seashells the size of trenchers and twine anemones into their hair.”

Brienne blinked. Seashells would fall the moment one started to swim, even secured with seagrass, and anemones were bothersome creatures and venomous besides.

“What purpose could that serve?”

“Purpose? Why, I imagine its purpose would be to serve none.”

She frowned, thinking of the jeweled belt Margaery’s father was so proud of.

“Perhaps merlings are not so vain as that. If so, you’re nobler creatures than we.” Behind the shield of his book, Brienne thought the dwarf sounded amused. “I never overlook an opportunity to lavish my wife with pearls and silks. She’d wear them, too, but for fear of Father. My Aunt Genna rarely exits her chambers without a small gold mine attached to her person, and even Aunt Dorna wears a gold-and-ruby hairnet for feast days. House fashions are not what one might call diverse.”

Peering over the top of his book, his lips pursed in a queer half-smile. “Do I need to explain the concept of clothing?”

“No.”

The little man went back to his reading.

Brienne hooked her fingers over the ledge of the pool, peeking at the painted leather tome. As a girl she’d stolen books up to her room, reading valiant tales of Ser Galladon of Morne, hidden away where her septa would not see. When had she last read anything longer than the name painted on a ship’s stern?

 _“Mysteries of the Sea,”_ she read aloud, _“Tales of Sea Gods, Selkies, and Merlings."_

 _‘Men don’t know half as much as they think they do,’_ the Queen of Urchins was fond of saying. _‘And even that’s not enough to fill a book.’_

“Who wrote this?” Brienne demanded.

The dwarf eyed her shrewdly. “Some long dead maester. Are there many historians beneath the Straits of Tarth?”

Her chest constricted. _Tarth. How does he know about Tarth?_

Water churned with the force of her retreat, but she spared no thought for his precious parchment. The gills flanking her breasts fluttered, and bubbles eddied around her elbows with each short, shallow breath. Her eyes traced his proud mein, that knowing green eye, the hanks of thin, bleached-sand hair brushing silk-clad shoulders.

“Gerion,” she realized, feeling an utter fool. “You’re his nephew.”

The Imp smiled, a hideous thing. “One of them,” he conceded. “Does he speak of me often?”

Gerion’s voice came back to her, mocking. _My nephew always did go on about mermaids._

“You sent him East to hunt me,” she hissed. “You sent that boy to drown, to lure me from my pod and pack me in a barrel like salted cod.”

The Imp struggled to his feet, looking alarmed. “Young Podrick is alive and well. I’m sorry if my uncle treated you roughly, but I can assure you, you’ll come to no harm—”

“Imprisoned in your menagerie?” she spat.

He opened his mouth in protest, but she had no interest in what he had to say. She disappeared beneath the water with a great splash and did not resurface, no matter how he called. Later, she thought of his book and wished she had drowned it until the ink bled like a startled squid and every page had shredded into seagrass.

 

* * *

 

“It’s b-bleeding, m’lord!” cried the boy, the one she’d tried to save. “She is, I mean. The mermaid.” His voice lurched hollowly off the walls of the cavern and rebounded through the pool, taunting.

Brienne dug for anger, for the vengeance that so many of her kind craved, but only pity twisted in her breast. He was younger than she had been when they’d heaved her overboard.

“Cleverer than she looks,” came the musing reply, as if she were some curiosity washed ashore by an errant wave, and he blameless in her discovery. Her wrath churned to life, deep and deadly as still water over a whirlpool. Brienne clenched her fist, fingers raw and exposed from tugging at the rocks that taunted her with the touch of the sea.

“Won’t she come up?” asked Pod. “We could h-help. B-b-bind her wound or—”

A deep laugh invaded the pool, shaking the water around her. Brienne realized she’d never hated a sound more.

“With what, lad? Kelp and seagrass?” Gerion squatted by the pool, hair glinting golden through the murky expanse. “Let her be. Sooner or later, she’ll realize we’re better company than dead fish.”

A thought took hold of her, as alluring as sirensong: how easy it would be to snake her hand from the water and drag him beneath its depths.

Bubbles startled from her gills, and a great splash soaked Gerion’s boots as Brienne fled to the bottom of her prison, leaving the thought in her wake.

 

* * *

 

The lion lordling toed another basket toward the edge and spilled it over, plunking putrid fish into the pool. Lampreys stared at Brienne with milky eyes, little more appetizing than yesterday’s breaded fingerfish. Gaping holes greeted her where their teeth had been, as if she might dig shards of bone from their jaws and fashion them into weapons.

He would not make the same mistake twice.

Ignoring the half-rotted food, Brienne curled up in a cleft soft with algae. A cold current nibbled at her back, feeding the pool through a fissure as narrow as her hopes of reaching the sea.

 

* * *

 

When the men failed to roust her, they sent the boy in their stead. Podrick. Pod. Brienne could hear his scuffling footfalls, echoing his wary calls.

“My lady? Lady m-mermaid? I-I mean, uh . . .” His muffled voice faded until he landed on the words he wanted. “M-mermaid of T-t-tarth!”

She swam silently higher, watching murky shadows coalesce into the world beyond. Podrick picked up his basket, shuffled around the pool’s edge, and dropped it with a heavy _clunk._

 _Not a basket,_ she realized. _A pot._

“M-mermaid of Tarth?” he called again. “I brought f-f-fresh f-fish.”

She drifted closer, stomach rumbling.

“I mean, well, Lord Tyrion s-sent them. But I brought them.”

Her fins jerked, propelling her down, stirring the surface of the water.

“Wait!” Pod called. “I’m s-sorry. I was his squire—Lord Gerion’s, not Lord Tyrion’s—and he s-said to be brave and— a-and I thought you were some creature. Not a person. Not a lady.”

 _I’m not a lady,_  she thought. Not anymore. That little girl was, the sister she’d never met. Brienne wondered if she had been promised yet, trotted out in silk and sigil to catch the eye of some lordling. Brienne had been betrothed at her age, though the lad had died long before she had.

_And my second betrothed took my life for a favor, then tossed it away on a craven’s whim._

“You d-don’t have to do nothing for them,” Podrick continued, pushing the pot closer to the edge. “Only he thought you must be h-hungry, and you didn't eat none of m’lord’s lampr— _oof.”_

She dodged the pot as it plunked into the pool. It rotated gently, spilling its contents before sinking into the depths. A dozen fish hung suspended in the pool for one endless moment.

They scattered. Brienne lunged for the largest, snapping its spine as she brought it’s tender flesh to her mouth, filling her aching belly. She’d almost forgotten what fresh food tasted like. When nothing but bones remained, she allowed herself a smaller, giving it a merry chase merely for the enjoyment of darting around the pool, sensing its vibrations in the water as if there were somewhere for either of them to flee.

The others she would save. She was not so foolish as to rely on the generosity of her captors more than was needful.

“C-c-could I have the pot back?” the boy worked up his courage to call. Brienne peered up warily, but the child was still alone by the water’s edge, so she fetched the pot and pushed it over the lip of the pool, well away from where he stood.

“I was s-supposed to ask you . . .” His brows drew together like a startled sea slug. “M-mara? Or . . . Lara? No, it h-had an mm-m-mm-mm sound.” He plopped down beside the pool, legs folded up, then scooted back from the edge, eying her with a curiosity that was both childlike and wary. “Do you k-know anyone by that n-name?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

He looked disappointed, but she would not have told him even if she had. She did not trust the men who asked.

“Where is Gerion?”

The boy leaned forward, as eager to prove himself to her as to his lord. “He s-s-set sail for Lys. Across the Narrow Sea. They have all s-sorts of t-treasures.”

 _Lys._ Brienne knew little of the Free Cities, no more than snippets overheard from sailors, whose talk was mostly of trade.

 _Rarities,_ she remembered. _Fantasies. Slaves._

The fish roiled in her stomach as if she had swallowed them whole.

 

* * *

 

 _There is no choice,_ Brienne thought. _Do it now, or it will be too late._

She kept her breathing even, counting each flap of her gills. On the sixth breath, she tightened the muscles in her belly, locking them in place.

She _shifted._

Pain lanced up her tailfin, flaying her flesh. She shed her scales as her gills seared and screamed and stitched themselves shut. Loras used to say that shapeshifting must be easier for her, because surely her body remembered the motions of men.

Willas knew better.

“You’re defying the gods, in a way.” He'd studied the twisted remnants of his tail, looking almost relieved that he could no longer change it. “It was the Merling King who took your legs, and he does not easily surrender what is his.”

Even now, when she fought so hard to return to the sea, the god gave ground grudgingly. Each splash of saltwater stung and soothed and stung again, like the salt baths her septa had once drawn after blistering her thighs with a cane. The thin membrane at the fork of her tail tore in twain; an invisible blade notched into the groove and hacked clean through her in one fell swoop. Brienne writhed in the water, coming out of her skin as bones sprouted like an urchin’s spikes, shooting down the cloven halves of her body. She sucked in a breath, but the water burned in her chest. She came up choking, spewing snot and seawater. The Sunset Sea roared in the distance, echoing off the walls of her prison.

_No time to waste._

She dug her fingers into the stone and heaved herself onto the slick lip of the pool. Her arms shook from the effort, and when her hip scraped the ledge, the newborn skin wept blood.

When she planted her feet, she couldn’t help but cry out. From her toes to her hips, her body seared like she was tangled in a bloom of jellyfish.

Gritting her teeth, Brienne pressed on, stumbling toward the flaming sentries that lined the tunnel. _Another step,_ she thought, as the rocky floor shredded the untried skin of her feet. _Another. Another._

Step by step, the hated cavern disappeared behind her, taking the sweet smell of saltwater with it. She trod on a fragment of rock, and pain seared through her skin and bled onto the stone. She fell heavily against the wall, catching herself with her arms, and nearly cried in relief as the pressure on her feet eased. After that she walked her palms along the walls, one over the other where the tunnel was wide, arms outspread when it was narrow enough to span. Her legs grew stronger, muscles tense and seething. The sea roared in her ears, beckoning her onward.

_Another step. Another._

The torchlight grew sparser, giving her time to adjust to the endless black. Every so often, another light flared in the distance, and she blinked away spots as white as sea snow. Once, when her vision cleared, two black maws gaped open before her. She listened for the sea, but it seemed to rumble through the tunnels, echoing now this way, now that, before finally exploding into nothingness.

 _Choose,_ she told herself firmly, and her feet carried her on.

They stung with every step. Twice or thrice she fell, bruising her hip and scraping the skin from her knees, but Brienne pressed on until at last, she spotted unlit torches clustered along the walls, green sentries guarding against the deep unknown.

She was so close. Soon the sea breeze would kiss her cheeks, and she’d hear the cry of the seagulls beckoning her home. The thought was so sweet she would have wept.

Another step, another, and then—

_Creak._

She stopped, heart pounding.

_Doom-boom._

The sound echoed off the walls, rumbling towards her. She turned to flee, stumbling in her haste. Footsteps echoed off the stone, light and lazy, marking the monster who stalked her steps.

_Maiden-Made-of-Light, protect me from the night._

The bootsteps paused. One breath. Two.

The hunt began anew, faster than before. She glanced behind her to find the path she’d trod gleaming in the torchlight, shiny and red.

The bootsteps sounded closer, _closer,_ until their hollow thuds seemed to echo all around her. Her legs were as pliant as water, weak as a fingerling’s tail. Forcing strength into her alien limbs, Brienne spun, teeth bared.

Golden hair. Green eyes. An incredulous laugh startled from a familiar mouth.

 _You can’t be here,_ was all she could think. _Pod said that you were gone._

There was something odd about the way his torch flung shadows, sharpening cheekbones, smoothing skin, chipping the blockiness from his body. It did not matter. She was weak, wounded, half-wasted away, but she would give him no easy victory. She took a lurching step . . .

. . . and came down hard on a jagged rock. Her sole split open. Black flecks danced across her vision. Her body convulsed as the Merling King’s gift fought for its freedom. Pain lanced up her legs—fins—feet—

Darkness closed around her like an embrace, catching her before she could fall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I definitely dug into Grimm's fairytales for this chapter. Endless apologies for torturing Brienne so.


	4. stranded

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your patience with this chapter, guys. I wound up rewriting a significant chunk of it (twice) because certain handsome assholes refused to cooperate (as did less important elements like the plot). And then things got a little out of hand. I was well onto page 13 before I realized that the story might be better served if I spit the chapter into two. But hey, that means chapter 5 is almost done :) 
> 
> Your comments have been a major source of inspiration & I seriously appreciate each and every one. Hopefully, it’s worth the wait!
> 
> If you haven’t heard to Karliene’s cover of _It’s Always Summer Under the Sea_ , stop what you’re doing and go listen to it. It’s haunting and lovely and 72% responsible for the first part of this chapter.

Brienne floated in the shallows, head pillowed on a stone. The sun warmed her cheeks, so bright that it turned the world white. _I must not linger,_ she told herself. Her freckles betrayed her forays to the surface, darkening to a mud-dark brand that the Queen of Urchins could spot halfway across the seabed.

Voices drifted all around, but they echoed oddly, lacking the lilt lent by water. _Landlings._ Caution tugged at her, but her mind felt slow and stupid, her tail heavy, her strength spent. A wave of darkness crashed over her, drowning out the sun, and Brienne slipped gratefully into its depths.

Far beneath the frothing waves, Shireen sang a melancholy tune. _It’s always summer under the sea, I know, I know, oh, oh, oh._

Loras fled the sanctuary of the sea, stumbling to his knees upon the sand.

 _“Stay close to the pod,”_ Brienne warned him, _“it’s not safe.”_

But above the crashing waves, he could not hear her, no more than he heard Shireen’s lament. _The shadows come to dance, my lord - ord - o r d._

A handsome man caught Loras by the waist and hauled him up, laughing. _“If I kiss you now, will you still taste of fish?”_ They stumbled together up the beach, toward the keep that was a god’s grief, while Shireen’s sorrow nipped at their heels. _Oh, clever, clever, clever fool._

Brienne lay aboard a ship’s deck, withering beneath the relentless sun. Gerion stared down at her, but for once, he was not smiling. _No, it is not him._ His eel-green eyes never held that current of concern, no matter how she thrashed or begged or bled.

“Bloody, stupid sea-cow,” muttered the man who was not Gerion, growing hazier with every word. He shook his head, as golden as the sun should be, filtered through the softly sparkling sea. “I must be as mad as old . . . King . . . Aer . . .”

Pain pulled her back under. Sea snakes tangled around her tail, hissing and biting, squeezing her apart at the seams. _They will devour me whole,_ she thought, but she was wrong. They dragged her toward a rocky shoal, to a twisted water-demon with inscrutable eyes. “You’ve been keeping secrets, Mermaid of Tarth.”  

She fled, floundered, and then she was floating in the open sea, cradled in the reflection of the moon, whose pearlescent face belonged to a goddess, and her mother, and the lady of the sea.

 _I loved a maid as white as winter,_ sighed a sea breeze, rustling Brienne’s tangled hair, _with moonglow in her hair._

“Do you sing, child?” asked the Moon-Pale Maiden in a voice softer than seaspray. Brienne opened her mouth, but the words caught in her throat, netted by the memory of Ser Hyle and all the rest—the men she’d helped the sea slay.

 _No,_ she wanted to say, _I sacrificed my songs to the sea._ When she was a girl, melodies had filled her father’s hall, as dependable as the tides: tales of love and chivalry learned at a minstrel’s feet. The Siren had stolen her innocence with her songs.

 _You were eager to learn,_ a part of her whispered. Something foul touched her tongue, slithering from the deep chasm in her breast where her songs had all gone to die. _Foolish fingerling, meddling with magic whose danger was plain, if you’d only thought to look._

“—expect me to believe—”

A swell of voices, carried on the wake of a distant ship. The goddess slipped out of sight behind a cloud.

“—discovered her. Do you think she’s the kraken king’s bastard come to drown us all?” A wry voice. Familiar. “No wonder they’ve tired of that sea-ravaged rock. There’s nothing to do but fuck fish.”

 _The Imp._ Brienne surged away, but the shipbreak caught her fast. The creaking hull of a monstrous cog loomed over her, scattering moonlight, until a gale rose from nowhere to scatter the ship, too. Suddenly the sun blazed high, angry and aching behind her eyes.

“Tyrion, everyone knows the bowels of the Rock were left to you. Were you staging Westeros’ queerest coup? Or perhaps you hoped to redirect father’s scorn the next time he deigns to visit.”

“Either would have been enough for me.” The Imp’s musing amusement soon gave way to weariness. “Tell me true, if I had told you there was a mermaid cloistered beneath the Rock, would you have believed me?”

An angry noise, but tired. It had weathered this wave before. “If you think to mention _her—”_

“No need. You’ve done it for me.”

Brienne breathed deep, relishing the feeling of saltwater flooding her gills. It was all around her, cradling her body, but here and there pieces of her poked out into the dry heat of day. Something hard and smooth pressed against her spine; her tail, bent nearly double, butted against its curved base.

Her eyes throbbed, but she forced them open. Sunlight glared back from every angle, white as a midday sea. One arm was wedged beneath her, but the other dangled in open air. Her knuckles grazed stiff bristles like a sea biscuit, but when she flattened her fingers, she found the floor as soft as a bed of algae.

The sun slipped behind a cloud. Blinking, Brienne examined her surroundings. Flattened stone towered in every direction, a cramped feeling after the cavern that had been her prison. Maps and tapestries hung from the walls, embellished in red and gold. To one side, the bed sprawled like a beached squid, a length abreast of the metal glinting under her arm.

 _A tub,_ she realized as her coxal fin spasmed painfully against its slick surface. _I’m in a tub._

The Imp’s head floated above the rim, framed by furnishings that seemed strange to her now: chests and chairs and a desk piled high with parchments. Behind the Imp stood the man from the tunnel; from her dream. Breathtakingly beautiful despite the oddity of those linen-clad legs, he held himself like a swordfish hunter, all coiled strength and easy grace.

 _He is as dangerous as the rest of them,_ she told herself. _Maybe more._ Comely men were quick to make bargains, Margaery had warned her brother once, but rarely thought themselves bound by the terms.

The Imp was growing frustrated. “Jaime, even you can no longer deny—”

“She is only a child.” The voice drifted from behind her, as gentle as the fingers that stroked her hair. “Not some monstrous kraken. A frightened maid, is all.”

Brienne knew that voice. _Not a goddess. Only a woman like the rest of us._

The Imp was powerless all the same. He turned toward Brienne, but he never saw her. “She is not even a _girl,_ sweetling.”

“I hate to prove you wrong, brother,” said the man who smiled like Gerion, but was not, “but somewhere beneath those scales, she has all the necessary parts.”

Her fins furled with some forgotten shame. He looked down at her, amusement skittering across his face like a seabreeze kissing salt into the air. Despite the frenetic breath skirling through the gaps in her neck, she met his gaze boldly.

He blinked, eyes going wide. He had not expected to find her awake. She thought he would betray her then, alert his brother, but he merely refocused on the brewing quarrel, lips twitching with some thought she could not fathom.

The Imp spared his brother a sour look. “That proves my point more than yours.” He cast his eyes beyond Brienne, and his irritation bobbed away. “I admit I feel a certain affinity for the poor creature, but we have yet to learn—”

“She might be big as an aurochs,” the woman insisted, “but she’s no animal, nor a monster neither.” Her hands were small and calloused, smoothing Brienne’s crown like a mother might, if she had ever known one. The Imp turned his monstrous scowl on the woman, but her fingers did not falter. “She’s not _her,_ Tyrion.”

“She is her kind.” It was not said cruelly, nor kindly, merely as a statement of fact.

For that, she had no answer.

His brother rolled his eyes, all impatient irritation. “Tyrion, I want her less than that Martell girl father keeps trying to foist on me.”

The Imp snorted. “Stable your valiant steed for a moment and look at this sensibly.”

Waddling to the desk, he riffled through the untidy rolls of parchment, scattering missives like startled fish across the gleaming, oiled surface. The roll of parchment he brandished was so small it must have fallen from the clouds.

“The Iron Islanders claim mermaids are slaves to the Drowned God’s whims, fucking and feasting as he sees fit. Driftmark,” he continued, jabbing a finger at the faded wall map, “fancies them craftsfish, carving thrones for the Merling King. The Manderlys believe, as do the fisherfolk of Lannisport. Even the bloody Baratheons have a fool who’s mated with a merwife, if the tales tell it true.”

“And every one speaks of maids beautiful enough to make men piss their lives away,” his brother finished. He may as well have said, _“Every tale lied.”_ The words should not have hurt—she’d heard far worse, and from those she admired better—but his eyes flicked toward her when he said it, and her throat stung like she’d swallowed an ephyra.

Lips twisted in consternation, he was more beautiful than she could ever hope to be. “I take it she’s the greensickness that brought our nuncle so swiftly home?”

It was not a question, nor did the Imp treat it as one. He weighed his brother from his little throne of wisdom, waiting for him to work it out.

“She sparkles rather less prettily than Brightroar, so he sailed off to find others.”

Silence.

“Gods, Tyrion, this is madness.”

“I admit she is rather large for your tub.” The Imp reached out, giving it a rueful rap with his knuckles. His ring glanced off the metal to raise a shuddering clamor. It reverberated through the water, down skin and scale and muscle to awaken agony in her phantom flesh. She clenched her jaw, fighting a moan, but it slipped past her teeth to hang in the air.

A silence descended like the hush of a swelling storm. She squeezed her eyes shut, breathing hard as the pain took hold, eroding her carefully collected wits.

Skirts rustled, followed by the hollow _thunk_ of stoneware on wood. “She needs dreamwine. I’ll fetch ‘nother bottle from the maester.”

 _No,_ Brienne wanted to cry, _don’t make me sleep again. Don’t make me dream._ But her teeth were clenched so tightly that her jaw ached, and no force of will could part them.

“Listen to your wife, Tyrion,” his brother urged. “Aurochs or not, your mermaid is hardly more than a child.”

“So was Cersei.” The words cracked like lighting, singeing any creature too near the surface. “You would not listen then, perhaps you will listen now.”

The storm broke, and Brienne slipped into the safety of a crushingly silent sea.

 

* * *

 

She dreamed of Evenfall Hall, sunlight glimmering on inlays of lapis and mother-of-pearl. Her lord father stood solemn and tall, pride catching in the crags of his face as he watched a young knight appear through the wide carved doors. Between them stood a girl, slender and pretty with a weak chin and bold eyes. Summer had kissed freckles across her nose, but her gown was made for colorless places, binding her in heavy wool like a sacrifice to the Northern gods of old.

The Queen of Urchins floated by with a keen eye. “Leave men to founder,” she advised. “Every one is more trouble than he’s worth.”

Behind her bobbed a retinue of drowned men. Galladon was there, watching his sisters through eyes wide and wan and wasted. Ser Ronnet burbled a laugh, but the jape lay dead in his eyes. And there was Podrick, breath bright in his cheeks, swimming through a sea of apologies as he dodged sailors who would never return from their summer voyage.

Hyle touched her cheek, his fingers cold and cruel. “Do you have a song for me, siren?”

She jerked away, stuttering denials, but the question caught in her ear, echoing an endless refrain. “Do you have a song, siren? Do you? Will you . . . sing . . . for . . .?”

 

* * *

 

When she awoke, night had washed the color from the world. Constellations twinkled through high, wide windows. A tallow candle burned beside the bed, stuttering like a harvest moon glimpsed through a rolling sea. A pallet rested on the floor, Pod curled at its center. Above him on the bed, she could just make out a shape burrowed beneath the blankets, dark tresses spilling out into open air. The lord’s wife, or some maidservant stealing sleep.

Brienne shifted, wincing as a dull ache sloshed through her. She focused instead on the hair tickling her ribs. It fell over her shoulder in a long, ragged rope, the plait plain and tied with a graying ribbon. Its loose ends swayed to the water’s rhythm.

 _A maidservant,_ she decided, until she caught sight of a fine velvet robe at the foot of the bed and doubted herself. _The Imp’s wife did not speak as one highborn._

So long as the woman slept, it made no matter.

She hoisted herself up to survey the room, searching for weak spots in this new, gilded net. Her elbow caught on a low table and she grunted, kneading away the pain. On the table sat a wide bowl, its walls sloping into a shallow pool where two small fish glided in lazy circles.

Hunger gnawed at her belly. She’d caught one in a blink, scraping off its scales with her hard, sharp nails. There was barely a mouthful of meat, but it was soft and sweet and she sucked the skeleton clean. Soon, only bones floated in the bowl.

It was only then that she felt the eyes on her.

Shrouded in moonshadows, the lord looked almost like a merling caught on a shoal, his eyes bright with reflected light. Where the Imp’s eyes were depthless, his brother’s were as clear as a tide pool on a summer’s day: idle curiosity scuttling past a shallow clump of concern; colorful deposits of humor and arrogance; hard-shelled resolve undaunted by the residue of foregone sleep, awash in a wave of frustration whose cloud had yet to settle.

Jaime, the Imp had called him.

_The Lion of Lannister._

As a girl, she’d heard such tales of his valor that, even now, they shone undimmed. Glories won at the Tourney of Harrenhal were nothing beside the campaigns he had led, subduing outlaws and unruly bannermen before he had seen as many years as she had now. More than once, she had imagined him fighting with her favor on his arm, crowning her with flowers and sweeping her off to give Casterly Rock a lady at last.

 _The fancies of a foolish child._ She was not made for such things. She had learned that long ago. Yet his presence seemed a mockery of those distant, girlish hopes.

Moonbeams flirted with his sun-loved skin, kissing scars to moonsilver. His hands turned a slip of parchment around and around as if tumbled about by an evening tide.

 _My life rests in those careless hands,_ she knew.

“Is that for the king?” The question rang in the silence, seeming louder with each passing breath.

“The Hand.”

She fought a shiver.

Ser Jaime Lannister crumpled the note in his fist. “Have no fear, fish-girl, it’s naught to do with you.” He dropped the parchment onto the desk. A moment later, he’d smoothed it out again. It bowed toward the center, yearning to curl back into its ivory shell. “Unless my good-sister was wrong about the krakens? Now _that_ would be a sight, storming the shores with their own bloody sigil at our backs.”

She frowned, wondering if he was such a fool as to believe sea monsters could be trained like destriers. “I’m not a fish.”

“Oh? That’s a tail, in case you hadn’t noticed. And most maids don’t have scales hidden beneath their skirts, or surely I’d have heard by now.”

Irritation surged, but she kept her voice low, mindful of the sleeping landlings. “I am not a fish,” she repeated.

“No,” he conceded, more ironic than agreeable. His gesture swept past her tail and swirled around her torso. “Fish . . . girl.”

She glared across the room, wishing he were close enough to claw. Too often she had felt the truth of those words, left adrift by the gods, belonging to neither land nor sea. She did not care to be reminded.

Crumpling up the missive once more, he pushed to his feet, impervious to her virulent stare.

“Curse old Quellon for dying,” he muttered. “And curse father for leaving his upjumped ilk to me.”

The name sounded familiar. _Lord of some island,_ she thought, _far from Tarth._ It made no matter.

“What do you mean to do with me?”

“Do you find our hospitality lacking?” A mocking question, one his uncle had asked too, but differently. Ser Jaime quirked a brow, as if to highlight the absurdity of such false courtesies. “This is a lord’s tub, I’ll have you know.”

“It is barely fit for a minnow, _my lord.”_

He loosed a laugh. The sound of it made her seethe.

“I could return you to Tyrion’s pool, if you prefer.”

She remembered the steady _plunk_ of foul water from above, the taunt of the ocean to make her heartsick, the green shadows that capered along the walls until she thought she might go mad.

 _If you try,_ she thought, _I will drown you in it._

He must have seen it in her eyes. He approached slowly, like she was a wounded ray, tail lashing in an erratic, deadly arc. “My brother is right, you know. Capturing you was utter folly, but now that we have you, what are we to do with you? We cannot march you out through the Lion’s Mouth.”

“Your uncle carried me in unseen.”

Moonlight glinted off his sudden smile, making those rows of flat, thin teeth look dangerous. “And you would trust me to pack you into a barrel and roll you into the _Golden Maid’s_ cargo hold?”

She thought of his uncle. Of Lys. Of slavers and grotesqueries and curious, callous maesters. The fear must have shown on her face, for his smile took on a touch of cruel irony.

“I thought not.”

“So you do nothing.” The words were bitter in her mouth.

“There is naught to be done.”

“A craven’s answer.”

 _“Craven?”_ he repeated, but she pushed through his stunned outrage like a hunter hurtling through a shoal of fish.

“Does the Imp rule Casterly Rock? Does your uncle? You cannot catch a current, then claim the tides were too strong. If you do nothing, _lion lord,_ their sins are yours.”

Ser Jaime caught the edge of the tub and leaned close, his voice low and hard. “House Lannister has no lack of sins. Nor do your people, my lady, if Tyrion tells it true.”

Something dark and cold churned to life in her gut, but she set her jaw stubbornly. “My pod does not murder innocents.”

A sharp smile. “It’s a long leap from captive to corpse, fish-girl.”

 _Not that long,_ she could have said. _Only the distance from stern to sea._

“I am not a _fish.”_

“Then what are you?”

For that, she had no good answer. She looked down at her hands, fingers splayed wide to reveal the webbing below each second knuckle. Bile stung her throat, sour on the back of her tongue.

“A name is a good place to start.” His anger had ebbed. The prodding tone that remained sounded oddly gentle to her ears.

Her chin jerked up, eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Names are earned.” For the Drowned Ones, at least. The Queen of Urchins kept hers so close that Brienne had only heard it in whispers, lest the old merwife grow wroth. Some, like the Siren, forsook theirs altogether.

“My name is Jaime,” he offered.

“I know who you are.”

He waited for more to no avail. Patience did not appear to suit him. The muscles in his broad shoulders curved as if straining against a net. His hands became two starfish clinging to the edge of the tub, streaks of white crawling down each flesh-colored arm. At last, Ser Jaime pushed back and barked, “Podrick,” in a low voice used to command.

The boy jolted awake almost immediately, swiping at his eyes as he stumbled to his feet. “Yes, m’lord?”

“Rouse Tyrion. He was always fond of beating his head against walls.”

Brienne growled softly under her breath.

“Where are you going, m’lord? Ser.”

“To call a council.” Striding to the desk, the Lion of Lannister rolled the rumpled parchment and tied it off, any hesitation long past. “Our ships have languished too long in the Lion’s Mouth. It’s time for a taste of kraken.”

The boy pitched forward on his feet, sank backward, then surged up again, the steady rise and fall of stifled eagerness. “C-can I come with you, ser? To the war council?”

“No.”

His excitement ebbed. Scuffing his stockinged feet, Podrick examined the floor. “Yes, m’lord.”

“Stop sulking, Pod. A war council is no fit place for a squire.”

“Yes, m’lord.”

The boy sounded so morose that even Ser Jaime had to sigh. “You can listen at the door. But it’s no fault of mine if you fall asleep on the floor. War councils are deadly dull.”

Joy flooded Podrick’s face. “Yes, ser! Thank you, ser! I won’t. Fall asleep, I mean. M’lord. Ser.”

 _“After_ you fetch my brother.”

“Of course. Right away, ser.” The squire backed toward the door, stumbling over his gratitude and his blanket.

Ser Jaime watched him go, reluctant amusement fighting for control of his mouth. A smile gained ground in fits and spurts, stirring up her enmity and scattering it to the seas.

 _He may be fond of the boy,_ she told herself firmly, _but he is no friend of mine._

As if to prove her point, Ser Jaime raised his voice to call, “And Podrick? Ask the kitchens to send up a fresh crab or two.” His eyes met hers in barefaced challenge. Her scowl rose up against the mocking turn of his mouth. “Our sea wench doesn’t care for fish.”


	5. storm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eternal thanks to everyone for sticking with this fic. Without your kind feedback, I'm pretty sure I would've given up by now. 
> 
> Since I wound up splitting the last chapter, this one picks up right where we left off.

The Imp must have proved difficult to find. By the time he arrived, a red dawn had risen, bathing the tub in the same crimson as the bedclothes. The lump beneath the blankets still slept soundly, a fact that amused the Imp to no end as he dragged over a stool as tall as he was.

“Now that’s a rare sight. I don’t believe my wife has missed a dawn since we were wed—short and hard suits her best in the bedchamber.” He clambered onto the stool and stared down at Brienne, a perverse sort of grin perched upon his lips. “She was a crofter’s daughter, you see. When the gods formed her, they nestled the cock’s crow somewhere deep inside. She never needs to hear it twice before she’s on top of her wifely duties.”

Brienne had the sense that he was making a jape, testing her somehow as he reveled in his own cleverness. She bit her tongue, afraid of stumbling over it.

The Imp prattled on. “Were my father here, he would almost certainly take this as another wifely failure. The only thing Tysha has ever done right, in his estimation, is fail to give me an heir—though the fault is hardly hers.” He knuckled his legs, swollen and bent as a sea cucumber searching for scraps. She wondered if the same warning that pulsed in her phantom limbs raged in his veins too.

His heavy brow dipped, casting clouds over his eyes, and for a moment, the green was nearly as black as its mate. Just as quickly as the darkness arrived, it lifted. “But you and I can forgive this uncharacteristic laziness. My sweet wife stayed up half the night to ensure her heartless husband did you no harm.”

There was something in his expression that pricked the finlets on her spine, like a shark circling some prey she couldn’t see. _He is trying to lower my defenses_ _as he did in the cave._

She flushed, remembering how easily he had lulled her then. Whatever the Imp sought, he would not find her such easy prey again.

“Did Tysha send for those?”

He’d caught sight of the cracked shells piled beside her on the table. Their owners had arrived well before dawn, snapping and pinching a cage of dried reeds. With Podrick restless to be gone and her energy sapped by the shift, she had quickly picked them clean.

“Ah, Jaime.” She did not know how the Imp gleaned the truth from her silence. He cast a wry, fond look toward the lump on the bed. “My wife has a soft heart. My brother rather less so, but he does have an unfortunate knack for gallantry.”

Ser Jaime’s smile swam to mind, sharp and taunting in turn. Brienne could not stop her snort.

The Imp smiled as if they shared a secret. “I did say _gallantry._ His courtesy is somewhat lacking. I could not say which has gotten him into more trouble over the years, only that I am usually the one talking his way out of it.”

“You like to talk,” she said, then bit down hard on the inside of her cheek. _He is like a siren who snares his victims with words instead of songs._

“I readily confess it. To that end . . .” He leaned forward, stubby fingers cupped over his knees. “It’s time we speak plainly, Mermaid of Tarth.”

The look she gave him could have stripped the scales from a stickleback.

He grinned. “Well, that spoke plainly enough. You’re not one to mince words—or looks, as may be—so let _me_ speak plainly.” Amusement disappeared into the depths of those dark, unreadable eyes. “Would you like to know why you are here?”

 _Is this some game?_ she wondered.

“I know why I am here.” She was an oddity, a marvel, a grotesque, fodder for amusement and braggadocio and some maester’s history. _While the true monsters, lords and Lannisters, roam free._

“You know why you were captured. But my uncle absented the Rock nearly a fortnight ago, and here you sit, stewing in old seawater.” His fingers drummed a faintly familiar rhythm, then ceased abruptly. “Surely you’ve wondered why.”

“Your curiosity is insatiable.”

“I would be a selfish little imp if I kept you here merely to satiate my own curiosity.”

Her silence could not have spoken more clearly.

The Imp’s mouth soured. Hopping off the stool, he trundled away. She hoped the insult had driven him off, even as her heart twisted at his slow, rolling gait. _The gods took his legs too._

But the Imp was not leaving, nor trapped in a tub. He was only pouring himself some wine. He took a mighty swig, swirling it around his mouth before swallowing. His eyes settled on the bed.

“My brother is unwed,” he said idly.

 _I cannot fathom why._ An uncharitable thought, but one she could not wash away.

He frowned when she made no answer. “Perhaps things are done differently under the sea.” Breaking off, he cocked his head, regarding her with those queer eyes of his. “Should I be calling you merwife? I never thought to ask.”

Ser Ronnet flashed through her mind as swiftly as a summer squall, loosing a last, desperate laugh as the sea raged around him. Her fins flattened as if to dam the crush of blood in her veins.

“No.” Merlings did not hold to the customs of men.

“Hmm.” The Imp regarded her for another moment, then shook his head. “Two-and-thirty may be young by the Blackfish’s standards, but my brother is better looking and better landed, and heir to the West besides. Yet for all of our lord father’s plotting, Jaime has reached a ripe old age without ripening some wench’s belly.”

Brienne remembered her last day in her father’s hall, freshly flowered and ripe for the picking. She imagined Ser Jaime standing before some young girl, all flashing green eyes and lean, strong limbs. Something stirred in her belly; anger or foreboding or something more sinister.

Swallowing another mouthful of wine, the Imp made his way back to Brienne. “Thrice my lord father betrothed him, and thrice the matches came undone.” Pausing beside the bed, he reached out as if to caress the curve of his wife’s hip. Stopping just shy of her, his fingers dropped to skim the silken coverlet.

“Any other man would find some bannerman’s daughter to pass the time, but my brother balks at the merest suggestion of bringing a woman into his bed. For a time, I wondered if he preferred the company of men. He would not be the first lord led to ruin by a feisty, curly-haired fishmonger.”

It was difficult not to flinch. _It is not only the lordlings brought to ruin,_ she wanted to say, but how could he understand, holed up in his castle with his crofter’s daughter?

“That theory proved as fruitless as such a coupling.” The next sip of wine was slow, measured. He leaned against the bed, regarding her over the rim of his goblet and her tub.

Her eyes throbbed, decrying the folly of broken tails and bloody footsteps.

She made herself straighten, meet his eyes. “Why should I care what happens in your brother’s bed?”

“Because,” he said simply, “it’s why you are here.”

Fear churned in her gut—feral, ferocious. She had dreamed of a water demon gleaning secrets as waves shuddered over hidden shoals. The Imp eyed her just as shrewdly, lingering on the gills half-hidden by her hair, her iridescent scales sweeping into fluted flukes, the delicate webbing bridging the gaps between her fingers.

“Tell me, my lady mermaid, do you sing?”

 

* * *

 

When Brienne slept, she dreamed old dreams; bitter dreams. A song sat sweetly on her tongue, but when it took wing, it swooped upon the sailors to peck the life from their breasts.

 _“You’re safe now,”_ Margaery repeated, eyes blank with incomprehension as her mersister thrashed against her silken shroud. Greedily, it swallowed up her feet, her legs, her lungs, until she could not move or breathe or weep. _“You’re a merling. You’re safe.”_

An unfamiliar aria wound along a high cliff, but the words on the Siren's lips were already stitched into Brienne’s breast. _“Foolish fingerling, you are too artless for seasongs.”_

 _"Too ugly,”_ Loras added, more thoughtless than cruel, and the cliff-song rose to catch his feet, towing him toward a salt-stained stronghold.

 _The gods weep for you,_ she thought, but did she mean her brother or the lions along the cliffside, dancing on the precipice of bitter earth and singing sea? The cub toddled up and down the rocky lip, face twisted up, searching, searching, but his brother’s ears were closed to his cries. The young lion leapt, laughing, into the fathomless maw below.

Brienne shouted warning, but sea mist curled into her mouth and bound up her body, dragging her into that same, dark depth. And all around her was the lion lord’s laughter, rebounding from crags and currents and caves to spit cruel courtesies at her again and again.

Brienne jerked awake, bubbles racing to and fro over her gasping gills.

 _It was only a dream,_ she told herself, hands clenched on the tub’s rim like an anchor latching onto a seamount. _A dream cannot harm you. Let it drift away._

The world was as dark as a seabed churning with clouds of sand. She sent a prayer to the Merling King and the Moon-Pale Maiden and the Mother for good measure, a half-remembered hymn beseeching comfort for her wayward daughters. And for her sons, too.

 

* * *

 

“M’lady!”

A shout pulled her from slumber. It skidded over the lip of the tub and plunked into the water, drowning itself trying to reach her.

“M’lady mermaid!”

A familiar voice, high and afraid. Even muted, it rang with desperation.

 _The Imp’s wife._ Brienne clutched the edges of the tub, hauling herself half out of it as a woman burst into the room.

“Mermaid of Tarth, you must come.” She was already to the tub, clutching Brienne’s arm, yanking it as if she had a prayer of moving a seamaid twice her size. “Please. My lord husband . . .”

Brienne braced herself as if for a blow, ears ringing with the echo of everything the Imp had left unsaid. _Creature. Siren. Killer._

“It’s his brother, Ser Jaime. He—” Outside the high arched windows, the wind snatched the words away, howling a fury fit to rival Shipbreaker Bay.

_Krakens and war councils. A red dawn rising._

Brienne recoiled, realizing what the Imp’s wife wanted.

“Please,” the woman pled. Her eyes were dark as dirt, swirling and frantic like dust kicked up by a charging horse. Here and there the dust settled, revealing the unyielding earth beneath. “I’ve a ‘barrow in the corridor full of seawater. You can go after, home to Tarth. Lannisters, we pay our debts. But you must save Ser Jaime. _Please.”_

Brienne remembered rain lashing her cheeks, the swell of hope in her breast, the jealous screech of the wind when her song swooped across the sea, wielding salvation like a cudgel.

 _Leave men to founder._ On that, the Siren and the Queen of Urchins agreed.

She remembered soft fingers threading through her hair, weaving a lullaby through troubled dreams. _“She is no animal,”_ the Imp’s wife had proclaimed. _“No monster.”_ Yet what else could she be if she did not try?

_Leave men to founder._

And then there was Ser Jaime, with his snide arrogance and capricious kindness and comely, cutting smiles.

_More trouble than they’re worth, men—every one._

“You cannot carry me in a wheelbarrow, I’m too heavy.” Brienne hauled herself, dripping, onto the floor.

 _I could shift._ The thought came from somewhere outside of herself, spoken by a maid as fearless as she was strong. Her scales bristled, and starfish flesh climbed her skin, prickling the hairs at her nape. Bile burned her gills, leaking out onto her neck, but she set her jaw. _I could._

When she looked up, the little woman’s face was hard as a pickaxe.

“I can carry you.”

Water sloshed onto the floor as Brienne hoisted herself into the wheelbarrow, but not a drop spilled when the dwarf’s wife gripped the handles and heaved them forward, wheel squelching on the sodden rushes. For a time that’s all there was: the crunch of rushes below, the heart beating wildly against her skull, the pant of the woman’s breath in her ear. Stone skipped by, and here and there a tapestry, hinting at some history Brienne would never know. The Imp’s wife did not falter, nor slow.

And then they burst into a busy corridor, slopping seawater onto slippers as they careened around startled servants and a wide, sun-haired woman whose silken mantle glistened like scales under a flickering sconce. She shouted after them, all blubber and bluster, until they turned another corner and her curses fizzled into seafoam.

It seemed an instant and an age before the dwarf’s wife flung open a heavy door and plunged them into darkness. Brienne gripped the wheelbarrow so tightly that her nails splintered off chunks of worn wood, wondering if this were all a trap.

 _I am like a dogfish who swam straight into a sea lion’s mouth,_ she thought as they descended into the bowels of Casterly Rock. A long, rocky incline hooked sharply into a tunnel that sprawled like a seal in the sand and spit them into a cramped, winding passage whose floor crunched as they passed. The Imp’s wife seemed to anticipate each dip and bend, wending around hidden dangers by the scant light of the torches. It brought Brienne back to her girlhood, navigating the shoals of Tarth with her father.

Left, right, left again. Cavernous tunnels nearly as wide as her first prison, and passages so small that Lady Lannister’s head brushed the rock. The woman’s arms began to shake and her breathing grew heavier, rasping through the hollow air, but she did not slow, nor ask for respite. Brienne rocked in the little cart, water lapping at her scales where they faded into freckled skin. And all around them, the eager sea roared, waging war against the walls of Casterly Rock.

_Ch-thunk._

Brienne spilled onto the unforgiving stone, seawater spread out like blood beneath her. She lay on her stomach, barely feeling the rocks digging into her skin, staring at the broken wheel beside her.

Lady Lannister gave a wordless cry. It battered the walls of the tunnel as she darted around the cart to Brienne’s side. “Are you hurt?”

Brienne tried to speak, but every answer tasted of untruth. She swallowed them down. “Back.” Her voice felt high and afraid. “Stay back.”

The woman fell to her knees, staining her dress with dirt and seawater. She hunched forward, fingers digging into the stone, but she did as Brienne bid her.

The water was so sparse, trickling away in rivulets down the faint incline. _Now,_  thought Brienne, _or you will have no comfort at all._

It hurt worse than before. Some unearthly sound ripped through the cavern, echoing from walls and rocky floors, reflecting the despair in Lady Lannister’s eyes. Brienne clamped her teeth together, trapping the pain in her throat. Her tail spasmed and split, faster than before. Scales scattered to the stone. Each one felt like a piece of armor hacked away, but the slashes didn’t stop, gouging muscle and sinew and bone to cut her to the quick.

Then it was over. She pushed herself up on shaking arms, struggling to get her legs under her.

“Let me.” The woman’s voice shook, but her arm was steady as it wrapped Brienne’s around her shoulder, leveraging her to her feet. Together, they stumbled down the passage. Lady Lannister was so short that Brienne had to hunch, knees buckling every few steps. Every step sent ripples of pain through her calves, hips, thighs. Rocks ravaged the tender flesh of her feet. The woman counted their steps with wide eyes, wetness flashing on her cheeks as Brienne’s footprints stained the stone. She did not suggest they stop.

Light glinted ahead, growing into a murky glow that spilled them into a monstrous cavern churning with activity. Fishing boats and merchant's vessels dotted the harbor, hoisting sails or hastily unloading goods. A dozen men levered a ship off its skid, it’s hull glistening with uncured pitch. A merchant protested loudly as a dockman wrestled two barrels down the gangplank of a portly ship; he yelped when one broke free, cracking open to spill wine into the greedy sea.

 _The sea._ Brienne’s relief was so strong, she gasped aloud. The breath felt alive in her lungs, rich with salt and the promise of safety. Lady Lannister towed her past the Imp arguing with a scowling sailor, past the shouting deckhands and creaking skids, towed her all the way to the edge of the churning harbor.

“Ser Jaime sails aboard the _Golden Maid_ heading northwest,” Lady Lannister said, pushing past sailors who gawked at the sight of her half-carrying a bleeding, naked woman down the dock. “The most beautiful man you ever saw. Get him safe to port, and I’ll tell Tyrion the debt was paid.”

“Tysha?” The Imp’s voice sounded distant, confused.

“Go now,” she whispered, ducking free of Brienne as she teetered at the edge of the dock.

“Tysha, what—?”

Brienne plunged into the water, and it swallowed sound. It swallowed fear and pain and uncertainty. Her legs knit back together, making her whole. Saltwater licked her wounds, a gentle, bracing embrace that healed some open wound inside of her too. Diving beneath hulls and oars, so low that she could skim her fingers over the rocky sand, she gave a powerful kick and left Casterly Rock behind her.

**Author's Note:**

> feedback is love


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